AUTHOR=Søndergaard Amanda Ark , Juul Sophie , Poulsen Stig , Simonsen Sebastian 

TITLE=Mentalizing the therapist – Therapist experiences with short-term mentalization-based therapy for borderline personality disorder: A qualitative study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry

VOLUME=14

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1088865

DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1088865

ISSN=1664-0640

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Background</title><p>Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT) was originally developed as a structured psychotherapy approach developed to treat borderline personality disorder (BPD) lasting up to 18 months in outpatient settings. However, a short-term (5 months) MBT program has recently been developed. No studies have investigated how MBT therapists experience the shift towards conducting short-term MBT for BPD.</p></sec><sec><title>Objective</title><p>The objective of this study was to explore therapist experiences with conducting short-term MBT for outpatients with BPD in the Danish mental health services.</p></sec><sec><title>Methods</title><p>Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with seven therapists about their experiences with short-term MBT after a one-year pilot phase. The interviews were verbatim transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis.</p></sec><sec><title>Results</title><p>The following four major themes from the therapists’ experiences with short-term MBT were found in the qualitative analysis: (1) <italic>The longer the better</italic>, (2) <italic>Change processes can be intellectual or experiential</italic>, (3) <italic>Short-term therapy is hard work</italic>, and (4) <italic>Termination is more challenging in short-term MBT</italic>.</p></sec><sec><title>Conclusion</title><p>Most therapists were overall reluctant towards changing from long-term to short-term MBT. These therapist experiences could inform implementation of short-term MBT in mental health settings in the future.</p></sec>